Heir to Hughes Estate
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Lysandra_Yaxley — 20 years ago(June 12, 2005 09:03 AM)
Since no valid will was ever found, his estate went to a group of relatives in Texas who inherited through the intestate laws. The intestate rules prescribe how an estate passes when there is no will. If the individual has no wife nor children, then the closest relatives get the estate. Also, Terry Moore filed a claim with the estate claiming that she was, in fact, his wife. She apparently got a substantial nuisance settlement from the estate.
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lbradford47 — 20 years ago(June 12, 2005 09:04 AM)
After Howard Hughes died a number of wills surfaced most being fake but the actress Terry Moore did file being a former wife. She was granted 10 million through the courts. This is the only person I know of that received anything. After everything had been sold HH was worth 168 million. I suspect a large portion of the amount was swallowed by lawyers. There is a DVD documentary on "Howard Hughes" The man and the madness, and it mentioned when HH was on his death bed just before being flown to a hospital that his personal physician went into another room, found his personal papers and shredded them for 2 hours. No one knows exactly what was destroyed but it was tragic how his handlers let him waste away to 90 pounds. I haven't any information on Howards' last wife, Jean Peters. I suspect alot of information has been quietly hidden about his financial empire.
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victorialhawkins — 20 years ago(June 13, 2005 05:55 PM)
The last book I read on Hughes indicated that it took about ten years to complete the round of lawsuits from assorted distant relatives on both sides of his parents' families. Most of the people who got money had never met him even when they were his contemporaries
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lbradford47 — 20 years ago(June 13, 2005 11:52 PM)
I just watched "Howard Hughes", The Real Aviator documentary on DVD. The question you asked was answered. In 1925 he made a will leaving his fortune to medical research. I know Terry Moore received 10 million being an ex-wife and she did say the bulk of his estate went to medical research. As for family members Howard said he didn't want to leave anything to them since they didn't deserve it. Litigation was an on going process for years.
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Lysandra_Yaxley — 20 years ago(June 15, 2005 08:10 AM)
No. Sharenholders own the stock of a company and either get income from dividends or selling the stock. CEO's get compensation and often stock from the companies they run but neither are 'heirs' in the legal sense to an estate of an individual unless they are specified as such in a will. Hughes had no will so, by law, his heirs were his closest living relatives.
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Lysandra_Yaxley — 20 years ago(June 15, 2005 07:55 PM)
THE MONEY
The Battle for Howard Hughes's Billions
By James R. Phelan and Lewis Chester
Random House 270pp $23
Howard Hughes's slide from entrepreneur, aviator, and film producer to paranoid, drug-addicted recluse is an absorbing but oft-told tale. Now comes The Money by James R. Phelan and Lewis Chester, two seasoned reporters and longtime followers of the Hughes saga. Focused on the aftermath of the billionaire's death in 1976, The Money makes a worthy, if prosaic, addition to the vast Hughes bibliography.
Mercurial to the end, Hughes left no will, opening the door to protracted shenanigans. Remember Melvin Dummar, the young gas- station operator who claimed to have picked up a grateful Hughes in the desert and transported him to Las Vegas? He is only the most familiar of a rogues' gallery of cranks and impostors who, along with dozens of relatives, laid claim to Hughes's fortune. But the book's central figure is William Rice Lummis, a cousin who was appointed temporary administrator of Hughes's estate. In the authors' view, Lummis acquitted himself well, persevering through epic battles with tax collectors and the self-serving triumvirate that ran Summa Corp., Hughes's holding company. The infighting is authoritatively recounted, but it is hardly compelling reading.
That said, the resolution of the drama turns on two richly satisfying ironies. Before he died, Hughes repeatedly said that he didn't want his relatives to inherit a penny. But thanks mainly to Lummis' skillful work, he and 21 other relatives ended up sharing $500 million. Moreover, long before Hughes's death, he had bequeathed his most valuable assethis stock in Hughes Aircraftto the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Hughes saw the tax-exempt institution only as a colossal tax dodge, and during his life, it funded little medical research. But in 1985, the institute's new trustees sold Hughes Aircraft to General Motors Corp. for $5.2 billiontransforming the tax shelter into one of the world's great philanthropic institutions. Howard Hughes must be spinning in his grave.